Alienation, autonomy, and ideology
This country feels different than it did just a few years ago. We’ve moved past the ‘Great Awokening’ and into a backlash phase. Many of us – especially liberals, progressives, and/or college graduates – seek answers. How did it happen? Musa al-Gharbi offers answers in his book We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite.
But they might not be the answers folks seek.
Let’s take a closer look at We Have Never Been Woke and find out.
When I turned 40, I wrote a post contemplating retirement from activism and activist work. More than anything else, I identified 40 as a crossroads. It’s a point where a person should step back and reconsider what they’re doing, especially in a college town with so many people in their 20s.
Nearing my 43rd birthday, I’m ready to check back in on the topic. I’ve definitely changed how I do activist work in the past few years. But even more so, I’ve thought about the legacy I might want to leave.
Let’s talk legacy.
Welcome to the second reading list of the new year! For this darker, winter list, I’ve got a selection of mostly political analysis. Read on, and let me know what you’re reading over the winter.
Near the end of his novel, The End of Eternity, Isaac Asimov has a few things to tell us about the use of automation and robots that bears interestingly on our use of AI today. Asimov wrote the book in the 1950s, during an earlier wave of automation. He had no specific knowledge of LLMs, of course. But in reading it, I felt as though the Good Doctor reached into our future.
Here’s a common story about what happens when someone joins DSA.
A politically engaged person arrives who cares a lot about one issue or approach. They join DSA to work on their special interest. As they join, they engage in a flurry of activity around their special interest: signing up with a national working group devoted to it, pushing their chapter to work on it, writing a Convention resolution about it, and so on.
In many cases, it ends badly.
Perhaps the Convention votes down the resolution about the person’s special interest. Perhaps no one else in the person’s chapter is interested in the topic, or the chapter takes a different approach to it. Or perhaps fights and feuds tear apart the national working group. Even if none of those things happen, the person might just burn out from putting all their time and effort into a single topic.
They leave DSA in a huff.
We see this story with a wide range of special interests. I’ve seen people go through this process on mutual aid, the Green New Deal, Palestine, disability justice, trans rights, Medicare for All, and other issues of note.
And so, I think DSA has a ‘special interest’ problem. I’ll also say a word about what do to about it.
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